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CousinLarry writes "Online 'university' Trinity Southern University (Google cache of disabled site homepage) has been sued by the state of Pennsylvania." Besides spamming, this self-described school has, as another reader points out, "awarded an MBA to a cat owned by an undercover Pennsylvania deputy attorney general." I bet my cat could get a PhD.

The real victim here is any online College or University that's trying to become a credible institution. With process stories like this few people will want to take the option of online Universitys and even fewer employers will take them seriously.

Actually, degree mills like this hurt all American universities. I was talking with the head economist of a UK based multinational a while ago, and he throws all American CVs in the bin unless the university is a well known and respected one, simply because he doesn't have time to fuck about checking their accreditation.

How would you find out easily? Universities are accredited by different organizations. MIT isn't accredited at all, last I heard, under the theory that people already know they're just fine. The reason the organization that accredits UC Berkeley has any clout is that it accredits Berkeley. This doesn't sound that organized to me.

Fake online universities put up all sorts of fake stuff on the web to try to give the impression of legitimacy. I'm not aware of a list of "real" universities to check credentials against, and this tactic implies that a simple google search might not be all that helpful. (Putting up a page saying "this university is fake" doesn't fix the problem; they have tons and tons of names.)

Universities aren't accredited so much as their programs are. For example, if you want a bioengineering degree that actually means something, you want a school that is "ABET accredited". They do other engineering stuff, too (ABET="Accredition Board for Engineering and Tech." or sth. like that). And they are certified by CHEA (Council for Higher Ed. Accreditation). Given a college name 30 seconds of Googling will find out if they're accredited in a given field, and by whom.

MIT isn't accredited at all, last I heard, under the theory that people already know they're just fine.

MIT is very much accredited [mit.edu]. "Everybody knows they're just fine" is not nearly enough to continue in business, not least because neither the federal government nor any state will extend grants or loans to students attending institutions that are not accredited by a recognized governing body. No accreditation = no $$$$, period. Recognized accreditation commissions are organized regionally in the United

In the UK, the general perception is that a degree from a university in the USA is equivalent to a set of good A-levels (exams taken at age 18, usually in 3 subjects, sometimes in 5) in the UK. In a large part, this is due to the lack of specialisation in US universities. In the UK, you apply to a particular department in a University, and then do a degree in that subject, rather than the whole major subject with minor subjects thing that seems to go on in American universities.

Its quite clear that people in the UK don't understand the concept of majors and minors.

A major is your field of study. If you attend a university you will work in the department associated with your major for most of the time you are there. A minor is entirely voluntary. You can choose to take additional courses in another field, related or unrelated and receive a minor. minors (or concentrations) have much simpler requirements and are meant to broaden your study should you choose to.

Considering how seriously employers take undergrad degrees while simultaneously disregarding their actual worth, in most cases, I really don't see much difference between an actual degree--regardless of where it's from--and one written in crayon on the back of a cocktail napkin. Maybe straight out of college with no experience, sure, but when people have a decade or more of experience, I don't care if you graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard. What you've done in the decade since going to Harvard is far mo

The real victim here is any online College or University that's trying to become a credible institution.

Not really. I've never known anyone to take online classes, nor have I looked at them, but when seeing stuff like TV ads for "Phoenix University Online", I would not put too much credibility for someone that "went" there.

College has little to do with learning or grades, its a rite of passage, and a general skills game for things like problem solving, meeting deadlines, communication, etc. Very few of

"College has little to do with learning"
No, College has EVERYTHING to do with learning. There are lots of other activities which can go on at college; but for some, it's all about learning.
I've taken a few classes over the internet, and have learned just as well in them as I did in my regular classes.
Lectures are usualy given in MP3 format, with insturctional videos when needed. I have taken Linux admin classes, English comp, and even speech.
The best part of classes over the net is that you can sh

Perspective students submit a detailed self-evalution for the degree of their choice, BA, BS, MA, MBA, or PhD. A TSU registrar will evaluate your application within 5-7 days and contact you via email with the results of their evaluation.

In a world when you risk being sued by putting in your name even part of silly/generic/etc trademarked names, there is nothing that impedes to call itself "university" and even giving PhD to such things?

Of course, just for sending spam they should be closed, burn in hell, pay millons to each spammed victim and so on, but i see a better irony in my previous concern.

"New Zealanders are mostly comfortable with their larger neighbor, Australia, although jokes fly in both directions. The late Prime Minister Robert Muldoon once was heckled that he had ruined the economy so badly that most New Zealanders were migrating to Australia. "They are merely raising the average IQ levels in both countries," he shot back."

See in a real university, this wouldn't be a problem. You actually have to go to classes, take tests, etc to get a degree. Thus a cat would never get a degree. I mean I have a cat who is smart, as far as cats go, but whining for food and purring on my lap are about the extent of his communication skills.

The point is that they clearly issue degrees with no actualy check of skills.

I'll take Britain's godless socialised education every day over educational free market capitalism. Employers shouldn't have to waste time determining whether a university is real or not. This is just as disruptive as the fear of litigation that prevents people giving bad references

It is not really a problem. Thier are several well known accreditation boards which are accepted. The boards range in accrediting the whole school to ones that accredit just a degree.
As for employees most don't worry about it. Thier is a set of books which they use, they look up the school and can check who it is a accedited by and dates. The human resource department does this, at the same time it is verifing that the person actually graduated.

Is it that hard for an employer to get an HR intern or lackey to compile a list of all "real" universities in the US? Wouldn't this be as simple as getting the latest U.S. News & World Report college guide and looking at their top 200 list? (Or at least their directory [usnews.com]).

sure, it can usually find a solution...one that costs the pleebs what little money they have.

Does what you're proposing sound *efficient* to you? Who do you think would pay for that certification? The student who becomes a worker. Why? because either the school pays for it directly (which filters down, with a surcharge, to the student), the student pays for it directly, or the employer pays for it directly (which filters down, in the form of it costing more to hire the student, thus the student is wort

In a "Godless socialised education" system, there's no incentive to succeed whatsoever. When public schools do bad, they just get more money, and their "customers" have no choice. They are forced to go to them. Monopolies are bad, especially when the Government has them.

With your great education have you even looked at education beyond your own borders? Do you think other governments aren't capable of recognising the place for rewarding success? Do you think governments are incapable of intervening when they see failure?

In the UK there's no obligation to go to your local school, you can pick any as long as you have the grades to get accepted - and others in Europe can pick one of our universities too. Yet in the US if you don't have the necessary cash you may well be forced to stay in state and go to a local school rather than explore the best that should be available to your academic ability.

I would still take a mediocre private education over the best our Government can offer, thanks.

Ever head of Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, Glasgow, Edinburgh? If your government can't offer better perhaps it's time you elect a new government? Free market education determines that access is based as much on wealth as it is on academic ability. That's plain wrong.

In the UK there's no obligation to go to your local school, you can pick any as long as you have the grades to get accepted

If by "school" you mean University then that's true. If you actually mean school then you're forgetting the postcode lottery: really good state schools are so oversubscribed that you have to live with about 100m of the gate to stand a chance of getting in.

If you have the grades you can go to pretty much any school in the US you want to (ignoring a few single sex schools and the like). If they admit you, you can afford to go.

Our financial aid system works different (different, not better or worse, there are too many downsides to all systems to make a comparison) from yours. Here you get grants if you are poor or a "minority". Above that, you can get loans for the full amount of the tuition bill. Most students and any school are getting some form of fin

It harms the reputation of ALL online schools, and American schools in general. If a person is born poor, and works his ass off to go to a good school that he can afford...one that isn't well known...then that school is much more likely to be dismissed as worthless by a prospective employer now.

The point isn't that the people who started this online "school" might (since its only "might") go to prison, the point is that the damage is already done, and for every one of these you remove, a

In a "Godless socialised education" system, there's no incentive to succeed whatsoever. When public schools do bad, they just get more money, and their "customers" have no choice. They are forced to go to them. Monopolies are bad, especially when the Government has them.

While the godless, pinko, commie, socialist, anti-american, linux-using Finns with their wicked socialist public school system came ahead just of about everybody, students from the free enterprise, privatized great nation of the US of A didn't look too well.

And in the soulless capitalist education system there's no opportunity to succeed.

Let's run full sprint into your personal educational holy land. We get rid of all property taxes that fund public schools, distributing the money back to the taxpayer so that they can choose a school for their children to attend.

Of course, this means that with a renewed interest in private education the cost of private education will go down, well within the reach of most middle class families.

Yes, indeed, and for everyone with unregulated internet access, the Internet Archive is a great source. However, archive.org is considered a "proxy avoidance device" by many enterprise web content management (such as WebSense) applications, and that is blocked to us shmoes behind a corporate "Shield". Google cache, on the other hand, is not.

I'm not saying I know the particulars of the situation, but if I submitted it, this would be my method too.

I really don't understand the furor over this. It wouldn't be the first college degree mill out there, and it certainly won't be the last. The only one whom people who get this sort of degree are cheating is themselves. I mean, sure, at first it may seem like they are cheating employers that take this sort of thing at face value, but it'll be pretty obvious once they start fucking up their job royally because they don't know what they're doing.

I do not condone it, I believe that you need to be forced to waste 4 years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars just like I did so you can gain that piece of paper that really does not way [sic] anything about your abilities.

I disagree that getting a degree does not "way" ("say"?) anything about a person's abilities. It says they are capable of learning. It says they can get the work done when needed. It says they can perform under pressure. It says they are dedicated, committed, and organize

One in particular, spent the first 2 years completely drunk. Daddy was rich, and he bought most of his grades through cheating. I remember him turning in an essay in the same class I was in and I knew for a fact he did not work on it.

many people tried ratting on him, it never went far.

Sad part is that he is a Regional VP for a large communications company now.

I have seen more people slide their way through college in a way that would normally get them fir

I've been getting these diploma spam emails for almost as long as there has been spam, and it always struck me as fraud and made me wonder why they weren't being arrested. You're not just cheating yourself, you get cheated as well, and for money. That's fraud, as it devalues the real thing, and fleeces the ignorant. It's about time someone started getting in trouble for it, only took like 11 years or so.

The only one whom people who get this sort of degree are cheating is themselves.

As well as legitimate degree-holders from any school whose name isn't deeply ingrained in the public consciouness as legitimate. Sure, everyone knows a degree from "the University of Pennsylvania" is legit. But what about "Pennsylvania Polytechnical College"? Or "Pennsylvania Institute of Technology"? Hint: I made up one of the latter two.

it'll be pretty obvious once they start fucking up their job royally because they d

Like most people, I get way too much spam to forward every single piece to the FTC. But I *do* make it a point, whenever a piece of spam for fraudulent university degrees makes it past my filters, to send those e-mails along.

I wouldn't mind so much if:

* Getting a college degree at any level weren't so much work* Getting a college degree at any level didn't cost so much* There weren't so many underprivileged highly intelligent people who never get college degrees because they can't afford it or are under the impression that they can't get financial aid

Let's see, cats:
Expect everyone else to do the hard work
Fuck things up and cause damage through boredom
Demand the best of everything without being willing to work for it
Boss people around
Fly into fits of rage
Have short attention spans
Spend 21 hours a day resting

There is an active on-line community at DegreeInfo.com [degreeinfo.com] who research and discuss the merits of each institution.

Here in the UK The Open University [open.ac.uk] has been providing fully accredited distance learning since the early 70's.

I went to a brick and mortar Uni myself, but have worked with several graduates of such institutions, both in the banking and academic worlds (I'm a banker and part time visiting lecturer at a local Uni), and they were fine; like most things, you get out of it what you put into it.

I work for a Distance Learning program which has several accredited online degrees [jccmi.edu]. While most of the students who take online courses usually couple them with brick and mortar classes, there are some degrees, such as Diagnostic Medical Sonography, which you can take entirely online.

I've read about The Open University; in fact, in the early 70s, its success served as the inspiration for the Tele-Universite [uquebec.ca] (text in french), which started to offer distance-learning classes in 1974. Since it was a part of the "Universite du Quebec", it was fully accredited from the start. Now, they offer well over 300 different classes in 65 different programs, most of which geared towards working adults studying part-time.

Without it, I wouldn't have been able to go back to school and earn a degree ; I'

Amazingly, the Village Council hired a member's son-in-law as village administrator. His credentials (completely unchecked, of course) included just such a fine degree. He would step into the middle of a complete downtown rennovation project.

Three years later, he has returned to Arkansas (thankfully!), but has taken with him $45,000 in severance pay. His computer remains at the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the rumor being it may contain child porn.

...
Homeland security honcha has phony PhD
A senior technical official in the Homeland Security Department has a phony Ph.D. from a diploma mill. I'm thinking that I'd like to get one of these and join my parents (Dr. and Dr. Doctorow) as Dr. Doctorow, Jr.(here) [boingboing.net]

Anyone with a brain should have read "fraud" from every bit of this. Their website has a web page [archive.org] (thanks to Zen Punk for the archive.org link) about their "accreditation". It's full of buzzwords, and says that they've been accredited by the "National Association of Prior Learning Assessment Colleges". Oddly enough, a Google search [google.com] for this only produces the page in question, a link to a message board saying that this "university" has been spammed heavily - and a website for the supposed association, whi

I believe that Guardian Newspaper ran a small campaign a few months back in their science section about "Dr" Gillian McKeith, the author of "You Are What you Eat", a number 1 book and popular TV programme over here in the UK. It turned out she'd actually got her doctorate from an online institution (it may even have been Trinity Southern, I forget the name) - either way, it was "accredited" by the same bogus board as Trinity Southern (and if you've read her book, it's pretty obvious she has no clue what she's talking about - chlorophyll is apparantly "high in oxygen", and "the 'blood' of the plant will really oxygenate your blood." when you eat it...depite the fact there's no light in your gut...).

Among the alleged victims are Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as numerous Internet service providers, businesses and technology companies. The attorney general's office said abuse of the victims' computer systems was costly and generated undeserved ill will by the recipients.

Ummm no.. sorry but Penn State and the others with open mailservers are not the vics in this case. If you are stupid enough to run an open relay mail server you deserve what you get... (which I woul

In the end, it's not really whether the cat or the dog is smart, it's whether it does what you expect from a pet. That's usually (A) what people mistake for "intelligence" and also (B) what motivates them into grasping at straws for "proof" that their favourite pet is smart.

Some people seem to like the unconditional obedience of an animal hard-coded to obey the pack leader. Even if the "pack leader" is a human.

In that case it's "Bowser is soo smart. He comes here when I call him!" And typically also "bah, cats are dumb/evil/etc because they can't be bothered to obey."

Some of us, on the other hand, have no need for basically a biological Tamagochi hard-wired to obey.

We like a cat precisely _because_ it's independent and doesn't need a "master". Cats are not pack animals, so they really have neither a "master", nor "servants" or "staff". You may be a cat's room mate, or friend, or a danger to be avoided, or (in rare cases) even an enemy. Either way, you can know that it's the cat's genuine assessment of you, and not some hard-wired reflex kicking in.

So we tend to generalize and anthropomorphise the other way around. "Yay, Fluffy is so smart because she can think for herself and doesn't need a master." And conversely "Dogs are complete retards for _needing_ to be someone's slave."

In reality, both points of view are false and based on false premises.

An animal's intelligence is what helps it stay alive in its natural environment, _not_ how well it fits your emotional need. In that aspect, both felines and dogs/wolves are "smart", just in different ways.

Wolves have perfected survival by hunting larger prey in packs, so teamwork and having a pack leader is essential. A lone wolf can't kill, say, a deer, so acting as a pack is what their very survival depends on. So for the pack to work, the animals are basically hard-wired to follow and obey the leader. It's a survival trait.

Felines on the other hand, with some exceptions (e.g., lions), live on prey they can kill one-on-one. Not only they don't need a pack to hunt, and not only there isn't enough meat on their prey to feed a whole pack, but a pack would also get in the way of stealth. If you've watched a cat hunt a mouse, you've noticed that it relies on not being seen until it gets within relatively short range. Trying to do that as a whole pack of cats, would just dramatically increase the chances of being detected early.

A first-grade teacher, Ms. Brooks, was having trouble with one of her students. The teacher asked, "Harry, what's your problem?"

Harry answered, "I'm too smart for the 1st grade. My sister is in the 3rd grade and I'm smarter than she is! I think I should be in the 3rd grade too!"

Ms. Brooks had had enough. She took Harry to the principal's office.

While Harry waited in the outer office, the teacher explained to the principal what the situation was. The principal told Ms. Brooks he would give the boy a test. If he failed to answer any of his questions he was to go back to the 1st grade and behave. She agreed.

Harry was brought in and the conditions were explained to him and he agreed to take the test.

Principal: "What is 3 x 3?"

Harry: "9".

Principal: "What is 6 x 6?"

Harry: "36".

And so it went with every question the principal thought a 3rd grader should know.

The principal looks at Ms. Brooks and tells her, "I think Harry can go to the 3rd grade."

Ms. Brooks says to the principal, "Let me ask him some questions."

The principal and Harry both agreed.

Ms. Brooks asks, "What does a cow have four of that I have only two of?"

Harry, after a moment: "Legs."

Ms. Brooks: "What is in your pants that you have but I do not have?"

The principal wondered, why would she ask such a question!

Harry replied: "Pockets."

Ms. Brooks: "What does a dog do that a man steps into?"

Harry: "Pants"

Ms. Brooks: What's starts with a C, ends with a T, is hairy, oval, delicious and contains thin, whitish liquid?

Harry: "Coconut."

The principal sat forward with his mouth hanging open.

Ms. Brooks: "What goes in hard and pink then comes out soft and sticky?"

The principal's eyes opened really wide and before he could stop the answer.

Harry: "Bubble gum"

Ms. Brooks: "What does a man do standing up, a woman does sitting down and a dog does on three legs?"

Harry: "Shake hands."

The principal was trembling.

Ms. Brooks: "What word starts with an 'F' and ends in 'K' that means a lot of heat and excitement?"

Harry: "Firetruck"

The principal breathed a sigh of relief and told the teacher, "Put Harry in the fifth-grade, I got the last seven question wrong.

I realize that. My point still stands that when I read the article, I read it as "Penny Arcade Sues 'University' For Spamming" the first time, then I had to read the summary to figure out who PA actually was, thus making the headline completely useless as a summarizing tool.